


it's always our self we find in the sea

by SeaOfBones



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, POV Sebastian, Sibling Bonding, gender neutral pronouns for the off-page farmer, vaguely melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22116049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaOfBones/pseuds/SeaOfBones
Summary: Sebastian goes to the lake at night to smoke, and Maru goes to check up on him.
Relationships: Maru & Sebastian (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	it's always our self we find in the sea

The year they moved to the mountains, Sebastian had almost drowned.

He knew now that the lake never fully froze over, but that first year – the ground was covered in snow, and the water had turned matte with a thin skin of frost. Gripped by the image of how cool it would be, to cross the lake in the darkness, calm and alone in the deep winter, he’d taken a foolish step and plunged right in.

It had been much less cool when Demetrius had pulled him out, gasping and shivering. He’d heard the splash and yelp from his telescope, apparently. Demetrius had wrapped Sebastian in a towel and taken him inside, insisted on talking him through first aid basics. Whether he could feel his fingertips, whether he was in shock.

That was the part that Sebastian found hardest. Demetrius wasn’t a bad person. But he could only think of him as his mother’s husband, his half-sister’s father, a man who lived in his home and who he tried to avoid running into in the kitchen. They weren’t warm together. They weren’t close. And Sebastian wondered if that was his fault. It obviously bothered his mother, the way he only called him _Demetrius_ rather than _Dad_.

Sebastian still liked to come out to the lake in winter. Robin was never around the house then, and she never liked to see him smoke anyway. If summer was when people liked to hire her for big jobs, winter was full of scrambling, smaller ones, when everyone in the valley found drafts and leaks that needed her immediate repair.

He’d once imagined that some monster was living out here, and had been calling him down to the heart of the lake the night he’d fallen in. It was a cool story. Nameless terrors that came from the deep, and old tentacled gods that slept in the ocean’s darkest crevices. He’d liked to think of himself as tragic, and doomed. Well, that part hadn’t really changed.

But he didn’t see monsters when he came out here, anymore.

In the great dark depths of the lake, there was nothing but water. Quiet and peaceful, gently lapping against the shore, the gleaming orange circle at the tip of his cigarette reflecting back through the ripples.

“You should really stop smoking,” Maru’s voice said from behind. She’d snuck up on him again. When he strained to listen, he could just about make out her footsteps, quietly crunching through the snow. “Do you know what smokers’ hearts look like, when they’re autopsied? The arteries are full of thick, white—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Sebastian replied, brushing her off with a quiet smile.

“Hey, didn’t you tell Harvey you were quitting?” she teased, as she knelt next to him.

“I think your boss has stopped believing me,” Sebastian replied. Still, he stubbed the cigarette out in the snow. Maru was still his little sister. She shouldn’t breathe in his fumes. And he really was trying, occasionally. It was just instinct by now. He’d go out into the mountain cold, and start to crave something warm.

“I actually wanted to pick your brain about something,” Maru said.

“Shoot,” Sebastian replied.

“Can I show you the code I’ve been tinkering with for the AI?” she asked. “I can more or less get it to do what I want, but it’s… messy. I thought, you know, someone with a bit more formal experience might be able to help me optimise it. I could even pay you for your time.”

Sebastian laughed. “Sure.” Maru was smarter than him, there was no question. So he was kind of flattered that she thought he was worth asking. “And you don’t need to pay me. Just let me use some extracts of anything I reformat for my coursework.”

“Okay, deal,” Maru said brightly.

He eyed her carefully. “Is that really all you came out here for?”

Maru shrugged gently. “Well, it’s nice out here.”

Sebastian had once thought this dark streak had to be from his father, with Maru being so much more… bright. That the reason his mother had left his father was the same reason Sebastian would never have anyone – that void inside them both.

But as they’d both grown out of being bratty teenagers, he and Maru had come to an understanding. Because as much as she didn’t seem like she needed it, Maru liked the quiet too. They’d watch the lake together, and didn’t feel the need to ask what the other was thinking. Maybe this was why Robin had moved to the mountains, why she seemed happiest when she’d spent a day alone, building. Maybe it was all of them.

The sky was deep, winter-dark and the stars were bright. Even without the telescope, Sebastian knew them well.

“I saw that the farmer came by again today,” Maru noted. “Did they come down to see you?”

Sebastian cringed. He’d gotten off to a bad start with the farmer. They’d kept bringing him eggs. He thought it was a prank, that they kept bringing him things he was allergic to. He’d unfairly blamed Demetrius at first, misremembering that it was Sebastian’s hay fever he’d been referring to the time he’d gone on a rambling explanation of exposure therapy.

He’d just been embarrassed when he figured out it was all a misunderstanding, after he’d complained about it to Maru and she’d immediately cleared everything up by mentioning it to them.

“Yeah,” Sebastian muttered. It was even more awkward, knowing that he actually got on pretty well with them. They saw when he was anxious and didn’t push him. They weren’t that talkative themselves. He wished the warmth of them getting him wasn’t poisoned by his embarrassment. “I invited them over to game with me and Sam next week.”

“Ah, is that the one I can’t make because me and Dad are going through to Zuzu City?” Maru asked. They were going to see a talk at the university he and Maru both assumed the other would go to eventually. But Sebastian hated crowds, and Maru… well, he didn’t get why Maru was still in the valley, but he knew she could go anywhere. Maybe Zuzu City wasn’t high enough, and someday she’d find herself in a village with five buildings at an institute that studied a very rare type of bacteriophagic fungus that only grew in one clearing.

“Maybe I’ll get you both some other time,” he shrugged. “They’re going to use your character sheet while you’re out.”

“I trust them,” Maru laughed. “I’m sure they’ll bring her back in one piece.”

Across the lake, the light went out in the kitchen. Demetrius and their mother would be going to sleep.

“And I guess we should head back,” Sebastian said.

“I guess,” Maru echoed.

Sebastian staggered to his feet, legs stiff from folding against the snow for so long. Maru offered to steady him as he swore. But the lake still did not call him. They walked along the banks of the still, black disc, reflecting the pinprick stars. Nothing stirred beneath, or if it did, it was so deep down that Sebastian couldn’t see its echoes.


End file.
